Paul A.

Kottman, ‘On Hamlet’, Tragic Conditions in Shakespeare: Disinheriting

the Globe (Baltimore, 2009)
What is tragedy in Hamlet, for Kottman?

To start, let’s look at three (ish) quotations that bookend this chapter. Kottman starts by
claiming, as Aristotle does, that ‘tragedy affects us by compelling us to reflect on, or be made
affectively aware of, our actions and activities in relation to inheritable social bonds — those
being whatever we require in order to maintain the conditions for living together from one
generation to the next.’ (p. 44). He states that:

‘The sociality of the affective response is, indeed, the fullest manifestation
of the social stakes of the tragic events themselves.’ (p. 44)
 Sociality (noun): the degree to which individuals in an animal population tend to associate in
social groups (gregariousness) and form cooperative societies. (Wikipedia)
 Affective response (noun): the emotional response to a situation (for example, the feeling of
pride and satisfaction a person obtains when winning, or the feeling of disappointment on losing.
(The Oxford Dictionary of Sports Science and Medicine)

By the end of the chapter, Kottman makes the claim that:

‘In Shakespeare’s theatre, the only possible “answer” to the question of

whether tragedy still works will lie in something wholly unpredictable,
unscriptable — his audience’s affective response, as a measure of self-
recognition.’ (p. 77)

Kottman finds a way of explaining this argument during his chapter that not only uses Hamlet as
an example, but indeed as evidence for this claim. He posits, essentially, that whilst ‘human words
and deeds’ are ‘inauthentic and disownable’, and ‘social life is irredeemably theatrical, false,
dissembling’ – discussing, for example, Hamlet and Laertes’s show of mourning for Ophelia, he
points out that it ‘has a hidden side, or a latent possibility. That possibility lies, as it were, in the
natural affects that human words and deeds seem capable of eliciting — a blush, a tear, goose
bumps, a bodily shiver.’ (p. 75)

‘O shame, where is thy blush?’ (3.3.81)

 ‘…what Hamlet seems to desire…from his mother [is] not a verbal confession but rather
an involuntary, affective response to the “conterfeit presentment” he show her —
something closer to a kind of confession in her looks.’ (p. 74)

Hamlet’s own tragedy faces two identifiable dilemmas, by Kottman’s definition:

1. ‘So, Hamlet’s question must then be: how do I make the death of my father — his sheer, natural
death — particular? How do I assert the particularity of this death for others when it seems as though
 it is only particular for me? How do I make of this death, of my loss, a matter worthy of our
note?’ (p. 50)
And, particularly relevant to our discussion:
2. ‘What is the relation between the tears of the living and the dead for whom they weep?
Does the act of grief denote grief truly?’ (p. 67)